Browser Wars

There are countless browsers available for Mac OS X. Since it's a whole new system to write applications for, everyone seems to have tried to get a foot in the door early to break the IE stranglehold on at least this platform. Of course, IE didn't give up so easily, and once it finally appeared for OS X, most people adopted it (except for those of us who were smart enough to use Chimera).

Now IE is effectively dead (on all platforms), and Safari is taking its place as the Mac standard (in large part through Apple's attempts to "integrate" it into the Mac experience). Where does that leave the other browsers?

Frankly, it doesn't matter much. Most of the Safari-alternatives really suck. (Sorry, third-party developers.) I'm afraid Opera, iCab (at least the free version) and OmniWeb simply don't cut the mustard, at least not according to my highly scientific study (having each render both the complicated International Herald Tribune site and my site).

Only the Mozilla family of browsers have a chance at the crown, as far as I'm concerned. That would include Mozilla, Firebird and Camino (which only works in OS X). However, each has its problems. Camino still has some bugs to work out in its password saving and script rendering (plus I'm still not sold on the buttons, even though Scott likes how it looks). Firebird is hot off the presses and still tends to crash.

As for Mozilla, it kind of smacks of Windows in its interface design (in that it is almost completely the same). It's not so bad now that I've switched from the default theme to the more modern one, even though it looks like nothing else on the Mac (or Windows). It's also kind of slow since it's Carbon instead of Cocoa (ignore that if you're not a Mac person). However, it's time I gave it a serious trial run. I'll let you know what I think.